The Seventh Impossible Thing
by Water-smurf
Summary: Alice didn't win that battle, and she didn't come back from it whole. The Red Queen won. The White Queen's gone. Everyone, even the Hatter, has lost hope. Everyone, that is, except Alice. Hamish would like to know why he's there, though. Alice/Hatter
1. Chapter 1

"Off with your head!"

The Jabberwocky twisted his neck so he was looking up, his eyes widening, and he tried to shift to counterattack, but Alice was already speeding towards him.

The wind was whipping through her hair, making it dance like fire, and she sliced the vorpal blade down.

The Jabberwocky roared, his tail whipping out and hitting her right in the back.

There was an explosion, then nothing. She was still flying, and her hair was still dancing. Colors sparkled across her eyes, and it briefly occurred to her that she wasn't Alice. At least, not the Alice everyone had expected today. Not the Alice they had needed.

The battle wasn't over yet—she hadn't even hit the ground—but somewhere in her, she knew that she wouldn't slay the Jabberwocky on the Frabjous Day. Her body was telling her that.

She'd lost the battle. The Red Queen had won.

She hit the ground. Blood streaked the dirt and her limbs crumpled. She was certain that she had broken something, but her body was blissfully numb. She should have been desperately grasping her sword and getting up, but she couldn't move, and if she had been able to sit up to look at herself, she would have seen the vorpal blade, the greatest hope for the Underland, lodged deep in her collarbone, impaling her in the only part of her body that hadn't been armored.

The blood from her collar bloomed in a lovely red flower, growing by the moment. If the Hatter were there, he would compliment it, but insist that it should be white to be truly beautiful, not red.

Her mind was already slowly fading away, and she could vaguely feel blood pooling around her.

"Alice!"

She only just grasped the fact that the Hatter was beside her, green eyes huge and only getting huger, blending in with the blur around them. Sound was spread unevenly, as though one ear had issues hearing and the other didn't. Was he touching her? She really couldn't tell… "Ha…"

Her eyes rolled to the sky, and she faintly realized that she was dying. She wasn't going to wake up after she faded. If her wounds didn't kill her, the Red Queen would cut off her head. And everyone else's heads. She wouldn't see her mother or her sister ever again, and her only friends would be decapitated and dead by the time she woke again, if ever.

The Mad Hatter would be dead.

"…Sorry." She thanked God that she couldn't feel the undoubtedly monumental damage done to her body, then started fervently praying for her friends and family's safety. "Not enough… muchness."

Darkness bloomed in red, and Hatter's response was lost in it.

---

The Underland shifted uncomfortably, feeling panic rising to the surface as events quickly spun out of the Oraculum's schedule and into a whole new direction. With the tear in the fragile fabric of its eccentric but delicate truth, Underland could feel its magic unraveling and sparking everywhere, undoing all its plans and efforts. A disconnect grew, and suddenly, Underland couldn't monitor the passing of Overland's time and adjust its own to keep things properly aligned for the champion. Overland started ticking away, letting the hours start to pass, and Underland could swear that Overland was blowing a raspberry as it did so.

Underland scrambled to predict the events again, trying to sew together the last semblance of order in the world made of madness, but soon, it had to give up. The blooming events were unpredictable.

The interesting thing about the Overland and the Underland was that, in Above, order is maintained and reality goes by a strict set of rules, called 'physics', and in the Below, while reality had it's rules, they were loose and full of loopholes, a world governed by the mad. But, in a odd paradox, Overland had no plan, no Fate. No Oraculum. Overland gave its inhabitants free reign of the direction the world would go, whether it be into the ground or to the stars, while Underland carefully plotted out every event its mad little citizens would be involved in, and made sure that those events were followed.

Underland made a risk by bringing in the Overland girl, but it didn't realize how big it was.

The Above girl had defied Fate.

From now until she was gone, Underland couldn't plot out exactly how things would go.

The very world itself cried out and struggled to keep from unraveling, all while Outland laughed, Overland slipped away, and Reality and Time divided and floated off with their own choice of world.

---

Hamish Ascot liked to think that he was a reasonable man. When his parents asked him to do something, he did it. When a friend asked for a favor, he was willing to accommodate—within reason, of course. He had spent his whole life quietly learning and molding himself to take over his father's work when he grew up and to marry a respectable woman to have children with. He had used his time as a teenager, instead of flitting off with starry-eyed girls in hopes that they were of looser morals than his future wife as other boys did, to learn how to be an excellent business man and a good, strong husband.

He was more than a little frustrated that his assumed fiancé hadn't put as much thought into all this as he had.

Two hours. _Two hours_, they had been waiting. She had just left him standing there like a complete imbecile in front of all their guests to run off into the garden, not even giving him the courtesy to say _yes._ Because of course she would say yes. Their parents had agreed, and so it had to be. Alice Kingsley may have her head in the clouds and may be a little odd, what with her talk of men in dresses and women in trousers (ha! A woman in men's clothing! Preposterous.), but she must know of at least _that_ inevitability.

Honestly, he wasn't particularly eager to marry her himself. He figured that affection would come later on in the marriage. She was beautiful to be sure, and her breeding was good, and his father approved mightily, but she seemed so foreign and disengaged, and not in the properly aloof 'I am of a higher standing than you so I'm going to prove it by not paying attention' way. Who knew? Maybe he would get used to it, or maybe she'd grow out of it. Maybe he would come to like her babbles of flying and men in dresses. Maybe he could come to love her eventually.

But before he could come to love her, he had to _find_ the wretched girl first.

"Father, I believe I should search for her," Hamish said primly, holding himself as straight as a pole and privately dreading having to walk through the forest for his stray fiancé in his good shoes and clothes. Nonetheless, this was what was expected of him—boldly going after his poor confused wife-to-be and leading her home with his steady, kind hand. Stuff from the trashy romance books his mother loved reading so much.

He mentally berated himself for thinking such awful thoughts about his mother.

"I think that that is a good idea. Find Alice and please bring her back to the party before she gets anymore lost than she must be," his father said, looking up from his quiet calming of the increasingly worried and agitated Helen Kingsley. Alice's sister seemed to be getting rather worked up herself, but for some reason, her husband seemed rather smug and relieved. Hamish couldn't imagine why and brushed it off as a figment of his imagination.

"Very well, Father. I shall send for a search party if I do not find her in an hour," Hamish said in the lofty tone his mother had taught him to use, groaning in his head. Keeping a light smile on his face, he turned and walked into the maze his fiancé had run into, easily making his way through to the hills beyond. As a young boy, he used to play with his friends in the maze and among the hills and trees. The slightest whisper in the back of his head wondered why he had stopped doing that—the fun had never diminished—but his cultured mind squashed the idea before it had even formed. It was improper for a man to play in the maze or the fields, except perhaps if he had a particularly young child, which Hamish did not have. (He'd probably have one soon with Alice if his mother had anything to say about it.)

As he started walking up the hill, even as his nice shoes were scuffed and dirtied, he couldn't stop the smallest smile from coming to his thin lips. He had missed walking alone across the land; nowadays, it was all parties and business…

He squashed the thought again, scolding himself for inappropriate urges.

A twisting tree came into view, and he could have sworn he heard something behind it. "Ms. Kingsley?" Oh, wait. He shouldn't be so formal with his fiancé, should he? After all, she'd soon be Mrs. Hamish Ascot… "Alice?"

He walked to the other side of the tree, only to see nothing but a big rabbit hole in the roots. (That was actually an unusually large rabbit hole. Someone could fall down there!) He scowled, turning to look around. "Alice! You truly must come back to the party—everyone is starting to worry that you may have fallen!"

There was a huge groan that made Hamish jump in place, spinning around to see where it came from. Another groan sounded, this time obviously coming from the rabbit hole.

He stared down at the black circle dumbly for a moment.

Oh. Oh dear, was someone down there? Had Alice actually fallen? Oh dear oh dear, she could be seriously injured…

Not quite sure what to do at first, Hamish slowly knelt by the rabbit hole. "Alice?"

More groaning.

He really didn't want to go down there in his nice clothes. He'd get dirty.

Hamish repressed a sigh. He had to go get his fiancé. It was the only gentlemanly thing to do.

"Wait a moment! I shall try to come down."

He gingerly stuck a foot in the hole, only to see that it dangled. That was odd. Rabbit burrows shouldn't be that big.

He frowned, then awkwardly grasped the roots of the tree and edged into the rabbit hole. Soon he was completely submerged, and his feet still dangled.

Oh well. He was probably a foot off the ground or something.

He let go, expecting to hit ground in less than a second.

He sincerely regretted his decision.

* * *

A/N: This is a little something I thought up, and since I've been making so much romance fanfiction for one fandom, I figured that I should stretch a little and try out a couple different fandoms and pairings so I can sharpen my skills a little. (That, and I love the dynamic between Alice and the Mad Hatter. There's obviously something going on between them, yet there's just a little something that keeps them apart--the Hatter's madness? They're not ready for a serious relationship? They had time constraints in the movie and Alice flitted off before anything could happen? I find that writing about stuff makes me understand them better.) So yeah. I'm making a little Alice in Wonderland story.


	2. Chapter 2

Hamish was curled up in a tiny ball for who-knew how long, shaking and wondering where he was and why he wasn't dead and when he would wake up.

He wasn't falling anymore. He supposed that was a plus.

When he realized that nothing else was happening, he tentatively uncurled and glanced around. Doors surrounded him, though interestingly, the tiniest door of them all (the size of a small animal, it looked like) had been broken off its hinges as though it had been hit with an explosive, taking a giant chunk of the wall with it.

This had to be a dream. It really did. Or a hallucination! Oh, was he going mad?! Or, or maybe someone put something odd in his drink! Yes, that was it! Hamish Ascot wasn't mad, no sir…

He slowly stood on wobbly legs, staring at the blasted piece of wall. Light flooded through, as did the smell of smoke and rot. He didn't want to go through that door. That door led to things his cultured, aristocratic upbringing hadn't prepared him for.

Something caught his eye. He frowned, then turned to see what it was. A crumpled blue dress. A very dirty crumpled blue dress.

He gingerly picked it off the floor, only to hear a tapping sound as a familiar necklace fell to the floor. These… all of these belonged to Alice! Why were his fiancé's clothes all over the floor of this strange door room?! Had she… had she snuck off to see…

No, it didn't look like it. If she had, then she would still be here, along with the charlatan. For some reason, she had just shed her clothes and left. Or someone had taken her clothes and put them there.

Had someone hurt her?

He grimaced, then leaned down and picked his fiancé's necklace from the floor, putting it in his breast pocket, and he dug through the dress, finding the handkerchief that he knew had to be there. Alice Kingsley may have been a little odd, but all of the aristocracy carried around handkerchiefs with their initials. It was only proper.

And, as her husband-to-be, he had to return it to her or hold onto it as a reminder of the woman he loved. Or the woman he was going to love at some point, with any luck.

He spread it out, noting that it was thankfully spotless, and he traced the elegant AK embroidered on the corner. He folded it neatly, then put it in his breast pocket to cushion the blue teardrop necklace. Then he dropped the dress, relieved, and started to try to open the big doors, praying that the tiny blasted one wasn't his only option.

But as he tried each of the other doors, he realized that it was.

He groaned softly and knelt by the hole. It looked like the door that used to be there would have been too small for him, but with the blast, he figured he could squeeze through if he sucked in his gut a little…

After a lot of huffing and puffing, Hamish popped out of the hole and tumbled into a garden. Or what looked like it used to be garden, anyway.

He glanced around, his Adam's Apple bobbing up and down with every fearful swallow. The sky was a dark, murky red, and he was sitting on the sooty remains of burned land. A couple embers glowed like rubies in the recesses of the blackened flowers, and for some odd reason, it looked like the trees beyond the garden (or at least the trees that hadn't been burned away) had been painted red.

He stood up shakily, dusting off his sooty clothes. Oh dear, it would take forever to get all that filth out…

But wait. This was just a hallucination brought on by a drugged drink or a hit to his head. There wasn't soot and there wasn't a garden. He wasn't going mad.

He swallowed again and started to walk, pulling at his clothes primly. "Alice!"

There was a pause.

For a moment, it felt like the land itself was reaching out, pulling him in a certain direction, as the urge to walk towards the right began to overtake him. He shook the thought off. The land leading him? Preposterous hokey one would expect from those so-called witch doctors.

Nonetheless, he walked to the right and started a long trek through the garden.

---

For the first time in years, Alice didn't dream.

She slept long and hard, and when she woke up, she didn't wake up to see the ceiling of her room at her family's country villa or their home in London. She woke up to nothing but cold stone above and a lumpy mattress below. She was aware of being wrapped up in a warm but very scratchy blanket, and it felt like she had been asleep for days—she could swear that dust had settled on her.

She struggled to sit up, getting the terrible sense that something was wrong, and she winced as pain jolted through her ribs, forcing her to hiss and stay still for a good extra two minutes before she completed her motion and sat.

"Would you like me to help you cover up, my dear?" a familiar rolling voice murmured from her side.

She looked, and a smile broke her face as she saw a furry blue-streaked cat grinning from the air beside her. "Chessur!"

She hugged him to her decidedly bare chest, but she really didn't care at the moment. His rumbling purr brought her back down to reality, promising hope that she hadn't had when she had fallen unconscious. "Chess… Oh, tell me what has happened! The White Queen, the Jabberwocky, the Red Queen, the Mad Hatter… the Mad Hatter! Oh, please tell me he's okay!"

"First, my dear, you should establish whether or not _you_ are okay."

The cat evaporated out of her arms, reappearing at her feet, though curiously, she couldn't feel him there. "Well, tell me: _are_ you okay?"

Alice looked down at herself, noting that her ribs, her right breast, and the right side of her collar were wrapped up with decidedly bloody bandages. Her collar bone felt wrong—every time she shifted it, it felt like something beneath her skin was stabbing the bone and skin at the same time—and her ribs weren't the best, and she felt a little awkward now that she was aware that her left breast was fully exposed (she really didn't want to know about how that had come about).

"Do you have something I can use to…"

"Of course."

He evaporated again, only to reappear behind her, wrapping her torso with blue ribbon. "Not the most modest outfit, but you don't seem to be in any condition to put on a proper dress," he purred in her ear, nuzzling her shoulder with the only show of affection he knew. "There. That should help until you can raise your arms without hurting yourself."

He tied the ribbon tightly, then evaporated, reappearing beside her again.

"Now that that's settled, can you please tell me what happened? The last thing I remember is being flung into the ground by the Jabberwocky and hurting myself horribly."

The Cheshire Cat looked reluctant to answer her, but reluctant to evaporate away to avoid the question at the same time. This did not bode well.

"Chess, what happened while I was asleep?"

"Well…" The cat slowly started to knead his claws into the blanket, focusing narrow slit pupils on his paws. "Obviously, the Red Queen won the battle. She overtook the White Army, though the White Queen escaped with that dog—oh, what was his name?—and there are still rebels."

Dread clutched her chest. "Then why am I still alive? And what about the Hatter? The Hare? Mallymkun? McTwisp?"

"They're all alive, last I checked," the cat said slowly, still kneading his claws into the cloth. "The Red Queen finds them all amusing, and the Knave convinced her that holding people prisoner for the rest of their lives is worse for the overall spirit of the rebellion than simply going around chopping heads off left and right. It's much more efficient, too. How is one to keep a kingdom running if they simply lop off the heads of every potential worker who trips over her Majesty?" He examined his claws slowly. "The Hatter is being used as a hatter, obviously. It helps that his mad fits amuse the queen. The Hare is a cook, though I have to wonder about the wisdom of that choice. The rabbit is a page, the dormouse is a little knickknack her majesty keeps in a birdcage, and so on and so forth."

The smile faded completely from Alice's face. "They're all slaves."

"Well, of course." The cat curled his tail around his legs. "But they're alive, which you nearly weren't. The Hatter will be pleased to hear that you are living and awake."

"He doesn't know that?"

The Cheshire cat shook his head slowly. "I had to scour this castle at his request for a week, and I only found you yesterday. You were in a coma, I assume, and I supposed that I should stay until you woke so I could spare the Hatter extra worrying."

He swept his tail over her vision, evaporating all but his head and floating to the door of the plain stone room. "You're in the dungeon, but the door is unlocked. I'm sure you can find some clothing and see the Hatter yourself."

Alice smiled, eager despite the circumstances to see the loveable madman, and tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed to stand.

Her legs didn't move.

"Coming, Dear?"

Alice's smile faltered and she tried to swing her legs again, only they remained stubbornly still. "…Give me a moment."

She pushed her covers back, only to see that she was clothed in nothing but underwear and her legs looked perfectly functional, if a little pale and dirty. She pinched her knee.

She couldn't feel it.

No. Oh no. No no no no no…

Panic rose in her throat and she pulled her legs back, manually placing her feet on the ground, only to have the legs flop to the sides like rubber.

"Are you alright, Alice?"

"I'm fine! I'm absolutely fine!"

And she was! She had to be!

She pushed herself off of the bed, not even bothering to straighten out her legs, and they crumpled like paper underneath her, sending her sprawling to the ground.

There was immediately a pair of paws on her arm, trying to help pull her up, but fear was starting to cloud her mind in a way it never had before. "No, I'm fine! My legs are just asleep!"

She started slapping her legs, scratching them, punching them, doing anything to make the feeling return. There wasn't even the pins and needles or the fuzzy sensation she had when they fell asleep. There wasn't anything.

Her throat constricted.

She desperately started beating her legs harder, stopping only after long intervals to try to drag herself up on her feet again, only to crumple and proceed to beat the unresponsive limbs again. The cat edged away, pupils huge and round, a mix of horror, fear, and realization in his face.

Slowly, her panicked thrashing died away. Her legs looked decidedly beaten, but they remained immobile. She couldn't move them. She couldn't even feel them.

She was paralyzed from the waist down.

Alice stared numbly at her legs, and the cat quietly jumped to the bed, pulling her back up and helping her move her useless limbs so they were lying on the bed again.

There was a long, awkward silence. Alice had to take a while to figure out what she wanted to say or think.

"…Please don't tell the Hatter about this. Or anyone else." Alice pulled the covers over her legs slowly, just spouting off the first thing that came to mind. "I need to see if this is temporary or not, and I know that they would be horrified if they found out."

"The moment any of them know that you're alive and in the dungeon, come hell or high water, the Hatter will come to see you."

Alice stared at the unresponsive lumps under the covers that she called legs. "Then don't tell anyone that you found me. Tell them that you'll keep looking, but you still haven't seen anything. I don't want anyone finding out until I've had a chance to see what I can do about it."

The Cheshire Cat looked up at her sadly. They both knew that there was nothing she could do, but the cat didn't have the heart to say so.

"Very well, Dear. I'll keep in touch."

He evaporated.

Alice grasped her legs, placed her feet on the ground, and tried to stand again. She kept attempting to do so for a full hour.

After that, she dragged her bruised body back on her bed, curled up in a fetal position, and started to cry.

* * *

A/N: It took me a while to figure out how I wanted Alice to react. I didn't really have a base to work off, so I did my best with keeping her in character. I hope you're enjoying it.


	3. Chapter 3

"I told you you brought the wrong Alice."

"Mally, I don't want to hear about it."

McTwisp scowled as he kept scrubbing the floor, his back aching but his heart too fearful to stop. The queen's croquet ball had escaped, so naturally, he had been blamed and punished with far more manual labor than his little rabbit body could handle, but he supposed that he ought to be grateful that he was keeping his head on his shoulders. He rather liked it there.

"Well, it had to be said, and the Hatter certainly isn't hearing it." The dormouse sat at the edge of her cage, frowning and letting her legs dangle from between the bars. "She can do no wrong in his eyes."

"Well, they obviously have a close bond," McTwisp said, forgetting for a moment about Mallymkun's own feelings for the Mad Hatter. He didn't see the dormouse's bitter scowl. "I'm more concerned about the fact that the Oraculum's predictions didn't come true. Frabjous Day came and went, and the Jabberwocky is still alive."

"You brought the wrong Alice. Of course it went bad."

"I brought the right one, Mally!" McTwisp straightened, turning his narrow eyes up at the cage. "I don't know why she failed, but it wasn't because she was the wrong Alice!"

"If she was the right one, we wouldn't be here!"

"On the contrary, Mally, I'm sure we would be."

McTwisp and Mallymkun both scowled when the Cheshire Cat appeared, lying easily on a table with a tell-tale purr in his voice, though his pupils were unusually narrow for such a seemingly good mood.

"I've been telling you that the Oraculum isn't absolute."

The rabbit grumbled as he went back to scrubbing the floor. "We have nothing to say to you."

The cat smiled, rolling on his back. "Still bitter, Nivens?"

"That you are a right coward only out to save your own skin?" the dormouse sneered, holding her cage bars tightly. "Yes."

"You wound me, Mally." He rolled on his stomach, still flashing his unsettling grin. "I don't see how using my evaporating skills to avoid your fates is cowardly. I find it… smart."

"Unless you have something new to say to us, you can go and—"

"How do you think one goes about fixing legs that won't move?" The cat casually batted at the air in front of him.

Both the rabbit and the mouse frowned at him, pausing in sheer bewilderment. "I… I'm not quite sure. I guess it depends on _why_ they don't move. Why do you ask?"

"Alice is from the Overland, Mally. Of course she's not bound by the Oraculum." The cat sat up, tail lashing from side to side, then jumped into the air, evaporating from neck-down and floating. Both the rabbit and the mouse looked confused for a moment by the sudden switch in topic again, but both shrugged it off as one of the cat's mad antics. "The force of 'what should be' wasn't the only thing we needed once she agreed to slay the Jabberwocky. You gave a child a sword and expected her to kill the monster that's been terrorizing the Underland for as long as anyone can remember." His body reappeared and he lazily examined his claws as he floated past the irritated mouse's cage. "It seems a touch unfair, don't you think?"

McTwisp paused, then started scrubbing more vigorously, nose twitching nervously. He hated it when the cat started talking about Oraculum and the Underland like that. It wasn't a secret that the cat was a very accomplished evaporator—he flaunted it every chance he had, in fact—and evaporators had a tendency to understand things that normal modest Underlanders such as McTwisp did not think about. He always had to wonder how much of the cat's talk of the Oraculum and the way their world functioned was true and how much was just Chessur having fun.

"PAGE!"

The Cheshire Cat twirled in the air at the sound of the Red Queen's voice and McTwisp let out a fearful squeak.

"Goodbye." And the cat had evaporated.

"PAGE!"

McTwisp's nose twitched fearfully. "Y-Yes, your Majesty?"

The door slammed open with enough force to send Mallymkun's cage spinning, provoking a loud shout of protest, and the Red Queen in all her big-headed glory stood in the room, green-brown eyes on fire. "Page! How far are you in washing my floors?!"

"I-I finished the first floor and the first half of the second floor, your Majesty. I am working through the next three floors shortly."

"I'll have the monkeys do it. Go and get my hat maker! Bring him to my chambers at once!"

"Y-Yes, your Majesty!"

McTwisp was gone in a moment, unable to hop fast enough to get away from the Bloody Big-Head, and he prayed quietly that Mallymkun would have the good sense to not provoke any confrontations. Again.

He hopped quickly, back claws scraping against the floor in his eagerness, and soon, he was sliding into the Hatter's workshop.

The Hatter didn't look up from his sewing machine immediately. He was just sewing and diligently working at his hats, forgetting who he was making them for and what she had done. McTwisp found himself to be incredibly reluctant to disturb the Hatter's episode of tranquility—they had become frightfully infrequent as of late.

But it was either he talked to the Hatter or the Red Queen would torture them both. He missed the days before she got creative and realized she could make people suffer with things besides decapitation.

"Tarrant?"

The Hatter looked up, giving a mad smile. "Oh, Nivens! Would you like to have some tea?"

"Tarrant, there isn't any tea. It's not four o'clock, remember?" McTwisp said gently, hopping closer to the workplace carefully.

"Oh, yes, of course! Time made up with us, yes…" He looked back down at his work. "Then I'm sorry, Nivens, but I don't have tea. Do you know why a raven is like a writing desk?"

"I've never been quite sure. Tarrant, the Red Queen wishes to see you and the hats you've made for her."

McTwisp realized his error too late.

The Hatter paused, freezing up for a moment. "The… hats… why am I…?"

McTwisp instinctively backed up, eyes getting wide.

The Hatter looked over to the rabbit, but his eyes were still green. Maybe he wouldn't have a fit. "Alice. Has Chessur found Alice yet?"

Then again, every time Alice was mentioned, a fit came. McTwisp suspected it had something to do with the Hatter seeing her body after she was defeated. The rabbit had been told that it had not been a pretty sight. "N-No. He didn't mention it."

The Hatter slowly looked down at his unfinished hat.

"T-Tarrant, I'm s-sure that he just hasn't finished his search."

The unspoken possibility hung in the air. Alice was probably dead.

"A-Alice…" He brought his shaking, bloody hands up from his work. "I-I am making… Alice… destroyed Alice… broke her like a… like a…"

He swung his arm across the table, roaring, and McTwisp jumped away with a fearful shout. The enraged madman lumbered towards the mirror, raising his hand to shatter it, but the chain keeping him in place tugged hard at him, sending him to the floor and twisting his ankle at an odd angle. He didn't seem to notice as he only roared louder and scrabbled at the floor.

"Hatter!"

He stiffened, hellish yellow draining into green, and his stomach clenched a little.

"…I'm fine."

He awkwardly stood up again, limping a little on his hurt ankle. "I should… go see the queen. Nivens, if you see Chess again… tell him that I want to see Alice. She must have put herself back together by now. It's been a week. Or two? I haven't seen Time in a while…"

The rabbit just backed away and trembled in the corner, wondering what would happen if the Cheshire Cat found a body instead of a person.

---

Hamish wasn't happy in the least. No way, no how.

He stood in front of the oddest sign, with one arrow pointing to the left, labeled 'Snud', and one pointing to the right, labeled 'Queast.' What kind of names were those? By His holy thumb, he would have whoever fixed his drink sent to the prison. No! Worse, he would have them sent to Bethlehem.

He wondered if Alice liked visiting Bethlehem to bother the patients. He personally found the whole idea vulgar and improper, but she seemed the type who actively protested against it. He hoped that she didn't protest too much. No one liked a wife with a big mouth.

A wild-smelling wind rustled through the odd, fractured, barren land and Hamish straightened out his clothes primly, finding that they were extremely tattered. A good thing this was a hallucination, he supposed.

He picked at random and started towards Queast, frowning tightly to himself. There wasn't any greenery around this place, which admittedly put him a little on edge. There was just soot and blackened trees that looked like they were stuck in the dead of winter. He wanted very much to sit down and rest his tired feet—he had already gotten a stitch in his side—but he hadn't come across a clean seat since he left the room with the doors.

"Excuse me? Stranger?"

He spun around with a surprised squawk. Oh, how embarrassing! 

A woman he could have sworn hadn't been there before was standing besides one of the trees, her hand resting on the blackened bark. She was wearing a modest but torn and dirty white dress, but that wasn't the most striking thing about her. She looked young, but her skin was impossibly pale, her hair was snow white (or platinum blond, he couldn't tell…), her eyes were dark, and her lips were painted black. Why? He had no idea. She looked a little odd, but there was definitely the air of aristocracy around her, something he clung to in this odd world.

"Salutations!" He pulled at his clothes, trying to measure whether or not this woman was worth talking to. "May I ask who you are?"

She hesitated for a moment. "My name is Mirana. You do not look like you follow Ira… the Red Queen."

"I follow Queen Victoria. I've never heard of her referred to as 'the Red Queen,'" Hamish sniffed. "That seems more a title suited to Queen Mary."

"Queen Victoria?"

"The Queen of England, and the ruler of several countries besides. Surely you know of her?" His confidence in this hallucinatory woman's breeding dropped.

"England…" The woman blinked in surprise, realization crossing her face, and she raised her arms slightly, almost as if she was in the middle of a dance. "Who are you, good sir?"

Well, at least she had the sense to call him 'sir.' "I am Hamish Ascot, son of Lord Ascot. I'm searching for my fiancé. Perhaps you have seen her?"

"Your fiancé?" The woman put a finger to her lips. "Oh dear. This isn't a place for two loved ones to be parted. I know all the people of this place; who is your fiancé?"

He didn't even wonder about whether or not it was a good idea to tell this strange woman. "Alice Kingsley, daughter of the late Charles Kingsley, an old friend of my father."

The woman paused, staring at him rather rudely. "…Alice?"

"Yes. Alice Kingsley."

"Hm." She shifted, frowning and folding her hands in her dress. "Well, I do know an Alice who doesn't come from here. I'm not sure if it is your Alice."

He smoothed his clothes. "She has blond hair, brown eyes, good breeding…" And he knew all this because his mother obsessively quizzed him before the engagement party.

"That does sound like the Alice I know, but she didn't mention that she was ready to marry…"

"I doubt she did," he sniffed, continuing to humor his hallucination in hopes that, if he found Alice, she would actually be the real Alice and not just in his head. "If you know where she is, I must find her. Her family is worried."

"Oh…" The woman dipped her head. "Well, perhaps this was meant to be. Would you like to rest? My companion and I have found shelter, and you should have your strength if you mean to help Alice."

Hamish shook his head. He had no interest in staying with this woman anymore than necessary. "I would like to know where Alice is, please."

The woman frowned, thoughts flicking through her eyes that didn't make it to her mouth. "If I were to guess, she is in the Red Queen's castle." She raised her hand and pointed towards the setting sun. "Walk in that direction. In a few hours, you will find the castle. Be wary, though—the Red Queen is a tyrant, and will likely enslave you or even kill you if she fins out that you're trying to save Alice. It's a perilous task."

Hamish had stopped listening a bit ago. Hours of walking? By God's thumb, Alice had better be the perfect wife and mother…

"Thank you." And he left.

The White Queen stared after him, frowning, and her trusty canine companion slowly walked up to her from the shadows. "Do you believe that he is Alice's fiancé?"

"I don't see why he would lie. He obviously doesn't realize where he is." She gently started to stroke the dog's head. "He does not seem to be the type Alice would want to marry, but whether or not he is telling the truth, I fear that I have just sent him to his death."

The dog whined softly and nuzzled the woman's leg.

She sighed and looked away. "May the Underland watch over Alice and all other lost souls."

The wind blew again.

"We should hurry. The Red Queen's troops are searching for you."

They both faded in the dead forest, leaving nothing but the scent of hope behind.


End file.
